The invention is based on a valve for a fluid-regulated heating and/or cooling system of a motor vehicle.
Such valves are known, for instance from fluid-regulated heating and/or cooling systems of motor vehicles. A valve member secured to a displacement rod of the valve regulates the flow between an inlet conduit and at least one outlet conduit. The valve can be triggered for instance as a function of temperatures in the heating and/or cooling system of the motor vehicle, or in the passenger compartment. Valves of this type at present primarily still have an electromagnetic actuator, which closes the valve by means of an excited magnet coil, causing the actuator to act on an armature connected to the displacement rod of the valve. A disadvantage of this type of valve is that the actuation of the actuator causes an abrupt closure and thus leads to pressure disturbances in the fluid system of the cooling system.
The water valves known at present for the heating and/or cooling system of motor vehicles are moreover sometimes very loud when they perform the switching function described. The noise develops among other reasons because of inadequate damping of the mechanical operating motion of the displacement rod.
From German Patent Disclosure DE 197 54 257 A1, a magnet valve for a fluid-regulated heating and/or cooling system is known which has an inlet conduit and at least one outlet conduit, whose mutual communication is established in a first switching position and blocked in a second switching position by an electromagnetically switched valve member. The valve of DE 197 54 257 A1, on its valve shaft, has an elastic element in the form of a spring, which slow down the speed of the valve shaft upon closure of the valve member. To that end, the spring element is disposed between the valve member and the valve shaft.
In a second version of the water valve of DE 197 54 257 A1, a damping disk is also solidly disposed on the valve shaft and moves within a damping chamber that is filled with a viscous fluid. To adapt the damping action for the valve member, a plurality of throttle bores are provided in the damping disk, which determine the resistance of the damping disk to the viscous fluid and thus slow down the motion of the displacement rod in the desired way.
From U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,541, a safety valve is know that has a two-piece displacement rod. While the first part of the displacement rod is connected to an actuator for the valve, the second part of the valve has two valve members spaced apart from one another. The two parts of the displacement rod of U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,541 are displaceable counter to one another in the axial direction of the displacement rod. The relative movability of the two parts of the displacement rod is mediated via an elastic spring element.
A disadvantage of the safety valve described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,541 is that complicated mutual decoupling of the two parts of the displacement rod. In addition, the relative movability of the two parts of the displacement rod in this prior art must be adjusted by an additional spring element. A valve of this kind, like the valve of DE 197 54 257 A1, requires complicated assembly, not least because there are so many individual parts. Furthermore, the complex design of the moving parts of the valve makes increased demands on the actuator, which in turn means increased weight and a large installed volume of the valve unit.